


First We Take It Easy

by dotfic



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-22
Updated: 2009-08-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 11:41:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/295457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dotfic/pseuds/dotfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the last battle, the boys find refuge at a hunter safe house, but it's hard to believe in safe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First We Take It Easy

**Author's Note:**

> a/n: Written for the whenthewarsover challenge, prompt #20: Both the boys are banged up after they stop the apocalypse. Cue reluctant hurt/comfort as they both try and look after the other. Title from Oysterband. Thank you to laurificus for the sharp beta.

"That's it, Sam. This is war."

Smiling that reasonable, godamned smile, the one that let Dean know Sam was about to unleash some kind of logical-minded thinking on him to get his own way, Sam raised the remote high over his head. "You had control of the TV for most of yesterday. Eight hours of WWE Raw and really bad horror movies."

For a moment, Dean forgot. He reached up, lunging for the TV changer. Just another game of keep-away, nothing they hadn't done a hundred times before. But he forgot -- and the pain shot up his side.

He didn't make a sound (at least he thought so), clamped his jaw tight and lowered his arm.

Sam blinked and the half-smile on his face wiped away. "Here," he said, and held the remote out towards Dean's chest. "Doesn't matter."

Holding up his hands, Dean stepped back. "Nah, it's your turn to pick the channel."

"Dean." Sam looked like he wanted to smack Dean in the chest with the remote but instead he put it down on the wooden crate that was acting as a coffee table.

Before Sam could get the chance to keep nudging him about this, Dean headed for the kitchen. "Hey, we got any pizza left?"

The house was small, the wood floors had given them both splinters, and the roof leaked when it rained. Bobby knew a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy, so Sam and Dean had a set of keys and could stay rent -free for two weeks. Lot of hunters crashed there, Bobby'd said, and when they'd arrived they'd found the bathroom stocked with gauze, peroxide, antibiotics, and painkillers. There was a bottle of whiskey in the kitchen cabinet along with canned soup and boxes of mac and cheese. The house had cable and wireless internet too.

Dean snagged a piece of cold pizza, then leaned back against the fridge as he ate, listening to the mutter of the television in the other room, cadence and music changing as Sam switched channels, and to the _tap-tap_ of water dripping somewhere. The pain in his ribs faded as he stood there, just listening.

* * *

Sam: one head wound, one dislocated shoulder, one sprained ankle.

Dean: two cracked ribs, one deep gash in his leg, two broken fingers.

Apocalypse: averted.

Dean thought they'd gotten off easy.

* * *

Sam _hated_ that about Dean. And when he said _hated_ , he meant he felt a catch in his chest whenever he thought directly about the fact that Dean was alive and there to annoy him.

See, it wasn't as if he hadn't wrapped Dean's injured chest himself, so Dean acting in front of Sam like he didn't have hurt ribs was completely ridiculous.

Sam had always joked to himself that even an apocalypse couldn't break Dean of certain habits, including the one where he hid his wounds even when he didn't need to. Apparently, it was literally true. Good to know.

He flicked through channel after channel, leaning back into the cushions of the ancient couch, where the imprints of many bodies over the years had worn shining thin spots into the fabric. The place made him think of a miniature version of Bobby's, except it didn't have many books, just a small collection inside a glassed-in bookshelf under the window. A few basics of mythology and folklore, nothing else. Given the revolving stream of hunters that occasionally called the house refuge, Sam thought any book with unique information would've been lifted years ago anyway.

He put his ankle up on the wooden crate. It hurt less than it had two days ago. So did his shoulder. He still had headaches--not too bad--and Sam welcomed the ordinary throb of them, knowing it was only the concussion and not anything else lurking inside him.

Leaning his head back, Sam muted the TV, cutting off the deep-voiced narrator of a documentary on the National Geographic Channel. He heard Dean shut the fridge door.

Sam closed his eyes, trying not to see the memory of fire, blood, and blazing white light. He listened to the sounds of his brother stirring in the kitchen, the scrape of a chair, the light tap of a cabinet door closing and the crinkle of a junk food package.

* * *

Dean: in denial (or at least unwilling to talk) about almost everything that had gone down, hovering (not just over Sam; he called Bobby once a day, pretending he wasn't going to ask how everyone they knew was doing), and sometimes flinching during thunderstorms (and acting like he hadn't).

Sam: for the first time in years, able to pray, and now it was always a _thank you_ because Dean hadn't been ripped to shreds and dragged off to hell again.

Total it up, and Sam thought for the first time in his entire life, the Winchesters came out ahead.

* * *

Having helped save the world from an actual friggin' apocalypse, Dean thought he had every right to eat Lucky Charms right out of the box and sit around in his sweats until past noon.

Sam kept picking up the empty food wrappers, dirty plates, and the occasional dirty sock, giving Dean a look with his lips pressed together.

"What?" Dean said, leaning to see around his hulk of a brother. "You're blocking my view of the TV, man."

"You planning to wear anything besides sweats at any point today?"

"Sam. Apocalypse. Not." Dean folded his arms behind his head, crossed his ankles on the wooden crate, and gave Sam a quick grin. "Relax."

"I am relaxed."

"No, you're not. You're..." Dean raised his uninjured hand and waggled his fingers. "You're _fussing_."

Which he was. It wasn't just how Sam had suddenly turned into a neat freak almost overnight; he kept checking on Dean, asking how he felt, poking at him like he was looking for cracks. "Sit," Dean said, and pushed Sam's calf with his foot.

With his hands full of dirty plates and empty food wrappers, Sam almost lost his balance, but recovered and dropped into the armchair. He put all the trash on the floor.

He fidgeted, scratching a fingernail along the brown fabric of the chair arm.

It hadn't been like this the first week, at least not where Dean could see it, but they were both healing up, and the past few days, Sam's glance kept going to the windows. He'd had the laptop out a lot more, too.

When some small animal had run across the roof the night before, Sam'd had his shotgun up faster than Dean could say, _dude, chill, raccoon_.

In the daylight, Dean thought Sam looked pale -- not the faded-out look from injury, but the way Sam got when something was eating away at him inside.

Dean slumped down on the couch and stretched his leg out to kick Sam in the knee.

"Stop it."

"I'm bored," Dean said. "Let's play cards."

So Sam pulled the armchair closer and they played Spit, and that went okay for a while. They both moved fast, slapping the cards down with enough force to almost crack the wood of the crate, but then Sam accused Dean of cheating (which he totally hadn't, no way) and Dean tried to put all his spit cards on top of Sam's, which pissed Sam off, and then there were cards all over the floor.

The wrestling match stopped with a yelp of pain from Sam and Dean yelling _ow_.

"You okay?" Dean said immediately, moving back but resting his fingers on Sam's shoulder.

"Yeah. My head. You?"

"My finger," Dean said. "And my ribs." He was aware that he sounded petulant, but, shit, that had hurt.

"Maybe we should just...watch some more TV?" Sam eased himself up onto the couch.

"Good call." Dean settled in next to him.

He let Sam control the remote, and they sat for a while watching _Ferris Bueller's Day Off_.

"There's salt lines at all the windows," Dean said after a lengthy debate over who was hotter, Mia Sara or Jennifer Gray. He bumped his knee against Sam's. "Lucifer's _gone_." That didn't seem to be enough. "You don't have to --"

But he didn't know what he wanted to say.

When he got the remote back, Dean made sure he didn't pick any horror movies.

* * *

Sam: couldn't quite accept they'd gotten out of the jungle.

Dean: not quite sure either.

Even if it was Sam that was doing the praying, Dean thought he'd try to believe in _safe_ enough for both of them.

* * *

Sam woke a little after two in the A.M. and couldn't go back to sleep. His heart wasn't racing, he couldn't remember what he'd been dreaming, and the darkness of his room seemed to nestle around him. He wasn't used to darkness feeling friendly, half-remembered it being that way during his time at Stanford.

He lay there for a while as his eyes adjusted to let in more light, and then he got up.

Dean's door was half-open. When Sam looked inside he saw the bed was empty, covers in a jumbled mess. The bathroom down the hall was dark.

His stomach didn't clench. He knew Dean wouldn't leave, knew it with more certainty than he'd ever had in his life. He thought he knew what Dean was doing, and when he reached the kitchen he saw the porch light was on, and through the screen door, an outline of head and shoulders as familiar to him as his own hands.

They'd fought for that complacency, fought red in tooth and claw, even though they still put salt lines at all the windows and doors, and would never stop.

A bottle of beer cold in his palm, Sam headed for the porch. Dean, halfway through his own bottle by the looks of it, glanced up at the sound of Sam's steps, even before the screen door creaked open.

"Hey."

"Hey." Sam sat beside Dean on the top step.

It was a little cool to be out in bare feet, wearing nothing but their sweatpants and t-shirts. The air tasted like rain, smelling of pine and wet earth.

They drank their beer in silence for a while and then Dean said, "You ever think maybe we're gettin' too old for this?"

Sam laughed. "Speak for yourself, old man."

"No, I'm serious." Dean held his bottle of beer by the neck, between his fingers. He reached up to scratch his nose with the edge of a splinted finger, then sniffed. "Hunting was it for me. I always figured, I'll do it until there's something faster and meaner than me, and that'd be it. But now..." His toes curled around the edge of the step. "Now I'm kinda wondering what's next."

"You want to stop?"

"Do you?" Dean's eyebrows went up into sharp arches.

"I don't know."

After a long stretch of quiet, Dean moved so his shoulder bumped Sam's. "There's always work to do."

When Sam looked at him, Dean was taking another swallow of beer. In the pale illumination of the porch light, Sam saw his brother's eyes crinkle in the corners, as if he was smiling.

They sat together, shoulders touching, until sunrise.

  
~end


End file.
